1.) The part with Scarlett had me thinking, “Is that who I think it is?” Before I could fully recover, the casting choice for Duke broke my brain because that was a mad genius move.
2.) I feel sorry for Zartan, Tomax, Xamot and Dr. Mindbender now. Seriously. That ain’t right.
3.) Damn, Olivia Wilde. Damn.
4.) The part at the end. If you show it to people, don’t tell them that he’s in it.

Vs. Mode is now up to version 0.8 with new engine-generated oval shadows:

I can change the transparency, color and size ratio on the shadows and there are 3 new screenstyles that use them. New characters include Adam Hunter, Mr. X (Streets of Rage), Joker, Lex Luthor, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Solomon Grundy, Star Sapphire.

Flash’s pose looks like a transition sprite before running but it’s also based on this cover. Luthor has the twin pistols from JLU episode, “Destroyer” but I’ll probably make later variation where he has some crazy 70’s weapon with him. Joker’s sprite is an alternate angle of that Carmine Infantino pose that Mego used on his toy packaging. Solomon Grundy is just being crazy.

Also started a brand-new Toys and Cartoons page with two headliners from the 80’s. You’ll have to go there to see those two.

Other stuff: New additions to the Mini Logo page include Edi.E, Metamorpho, Mr. Fantastic, Mr. X, Lex Luthor, the Question, Scarlet Witch, Star Sapphire, Solomon Grundy, the Thing, Tyrant (Resident Evil) and the Vision. I’m also hosting some old MUGEN stages done by some friends of mine including some G.I.JOE, MOTU, DC and Marvel based stuff. You can find those here.

First of all, I need to congratulate Zsabreuser for his win in the latest Zuda Comics tournament. His Rock Star comic is 8-pages of full-tilt crazy and I’m looking forward to watching this universe unfold. Z is one really imaginative artist and you need to keep an eye on him.

Also: Shin Otaru made some adjustment to the Cat’s Lair Thundercats Mugen stage:

ScrollBoss is nine years old and that fact has been messing with my head since I realized it. Eight years wasn’t a big deal because it’s just eight. Nine? Nine is almost ten and that’s just crazy. Here’s a few highlights of the update:

1.) Company Index: Like a hub page for a company’s content on the site. This area will mostly be ignored because it’s not sprites.

2.) Sprite Edits: Hey, sprites! Mario and Sonic done from scratch just to mess with the heads of those that think I don’t like the characters. Dammit, the internet is full of GOOD Mario and Sonic sites! That’s why I also made sprite edits of characters like Damnd from Final Fight, Rick Norton and Kazan from Brawl Brothers and Thomas from Kung-Fu Master. They don’t get enough fan love so I try to be there when I can. Also: sprite edits of Haggar, Solid Snake and multiple Batmans.

3.) Vs. Maker: Look, it’s more sprites! Still no update to the engine but a lot of characters got added. Batman is finally in there and is the only DC character to have a portrait so far. See? That makes him more special so that should make you happy.

4.) MugenBoss: I fixed and added more things that no one cares about except that it looks better. Here’s one cool thing donated by Kiwi and Shin Otaru:

I still can’t get over how Kiwi make the graphics from scratch. You can see the whole pic and more by checking out his deviantART page. If you have the MUGEN fighting game, you can download the real stage here.

EDIT:
I should have linked to the 7th and 8th Anniversary posts. Consider it done.

The whole album is good but this was my favorite before I even knew it was a single. Not only does it have a Black Star reunion over a J.Dilla beat with “History” but there’s an appearance by Slick Rick, the Ruler.

I turned 36 years old yesterday. I’m shocked and embarrassed by the well-wishing and insanely good presents I got this year. I try to stay low-key about my birthday for various reasons but other people decided to play dirty pool. One of my best friends got me a flat monitor that my eyes are still trying to get used to. Everything is so fresh and so clean-clean. One of my sisters even bought me a best German Chocolate cake, possibly my favorite cake of all cakes. Thanks again to everyone who got me a gift or said Happy Birthday. Damn you for making me smile about my birthday!

I only had two plans for this birthday. One of those plans: Root Beer and Pizza. Once again, even with lower-grade sources of both items, the combination managed to be the sure shot. The other plan was to draw something special. Since it was my 36th birthday and I’m a martial arts fan, there was only one choice: Gordon Liu as San-Te from the classic film “the 36th Chamber of Shaolin” from Shaw Studios. I’m still horrible at likenesses but it was still fun to draw this. It was a quick pic drawn after working the last work day of a week where I barely slept so I’m sure it could have been a lot worse.

I finally added the Vs. Maker Graphic Generator to ScrollBoss yesterday. What you can do is make a fake video game screenshot by making some choices on two different menus. You can choose from different game screen set-ups and characters from Capcom, Marvel, and DC along with screen set-ups from games starring those characters. Yes, I said DC, although none of the DC characters have the bigger background pictures (known as ‘portraits’) so the custom Justice League Task Force VS. screen doesn’t use portraits at all. This thing is still a work in progress and only the screens in the “Marvel Super Heroes” style work 100% accurately.

I’ve been mentioning it in posts since March 2007 and even linked to a cruddy beta test. It finally has an official spot on the ScrollBoss site after two years of scattered work and a huge scripting rewrite last week that allows more features like screens with four characters. There are still a few things I need to add before I can call the engine 1.00.

More graphics, characters, styles and companies will be added even when the engine isn’t updated. Obvious missing characters like Batman, the rest of the original 12 Street Fighters and SNK as a whole are at the top of the to-add list. The ability to make message board sigs and avatars will be added later. If you dig it or don’t, please let me know what you think in the comments section here.

I had to disable my graphics card because it started to run hotter than ever and kept making my system freeze up even more than usual. Due to this, almost everything in Windows XP happens in slow-motion. There is a soul-stabbing lag when scrolling Firefox pages, moving files in Explorer and, the worst part of all, doing almost anything in an art program. Due to that last bit, there will be no new full-color pics from me until this gets resolved. Since I’m working the least amount of real job hours I have in years, this may take a while unless my income tax returns decide to show up this week.

I’m still going through different programs to see what still works normally. One surprise is that WinKawaks somehow manages to work at full speed even when the screen is swarming with Xenomorphs in Alien vs. Predator by Capcom. That’s some seriously efficient programming.

This is just a heads up for anyone who visits Illmosis and ScrollBoss and also gets bored enough to read this blog. I planned to color the Green Lantern – Hal Jordan pic this week but that’s not possible now. I’ll try to do some B&W art to make sure there’s still an update this week. The ScrollBoss update is still on. In fact, I may work more on it since I can’t color anything right now.

After a solid month of wearing myself out on artwork, day job work, a painful walk to the post office that made my skeleton ache and a 2-day sickness that made all of that even worse, I’m staying in this weekend. I can’t make it to Free Comic Book Day at the local comic shop but it’s just as well since I’m too broke to make use of the crazy trade paperback sale the shop is having then. I have a huge amount of website work to catch up on so it’s probably for the best.

Part of that time will be spent sorting out my main e-mail inbox. FUN! One thing on the list is to hunt down my original Image-Line activation code from whenever Fruity Loops changed over to FL Studio. The original Fruity Loops activation file I have no longer works. Until I do, the free version of Fruity Loops I’m using won’t save song data. Since the location of samples is different thanks it having to be on a different drive, I can’t just load the songs and play them as-is. This one thing has frozen multiple ScrollBoss projects until I can activate my paid account again.
I spent nearly all of last month working on Illmosis so now I need to spread some love over to ScrollBoss. I planned to do some art for the Minus World features but coloring that Nutroll comic page just sucked almost every bit of spare time I had. I plan to split my time between both sites this month and there should be an update next week. Expect sprites, sprite edits, sprite donations from some very nice people and an update to the Sprite Bases tutorial. I’ll try to do two updates this month to make up for the slackin’ in April’s mackin’.